let's live in a big glass house
by sheriff stilinski
Summary: I can't hide anything from you. GalePrim


title: let's live in a big glass house

summary: I can't hide anything from you.

pairing: gale&prim

author's note: Argh. I love this. I think it's one of my favorite stories – to be honest. I'm so happy I finally wrote this couple because they have no stories, and I hope you guys like it. I was considering not putting any sex in the story due to the vast age difference – not even that it's vast, but due to the fact that Prim is thirteen years old in the second book - but it just came out. I adore this story and I'm so happy aisshdiuashdiuoashfiweuhfwe. Thanks to Grizzly Bear's music, this story worked itself out. :)

/

Glass is raining down on their heads.

His fingers are bloody.

Her head is crushed under the rubble – her tiny body cut millions of times.

He wakes up in cold sweat.

/

He has a recurring nightmare.

He hears Prim's name being called to the stand. He breathes a sigh of relief when Katniss volunteers. But that's a secret he'll never tell.

He wakes up every time with his stomach flipping and his head churning and his heart aching.

He still hasn't figured out why though.

But Gale wasn't the brightest person, really.

/

Gale falls in love with Katniss on a cold day in March.

He remembers it clearly. He remembers his winter boots having a hole by the toe, fresh snow hitting his moth bitten socks. He remembers wondering what the fuck he would do with his life, if he would ever be anything but the servant for his family. He remembers thinking that her name was Catnip and he remembers her pretty blush - the only girly thing about her.

He remembers Katniss' cool smirk, how her arrow hit the right target. He remembers thinking how easily she could kill – would kill.

He thinks that Katniss Everdeen could help him become someone – bring him far away from here and away from his family with the scraggly blankets and the lack of food. Katniss Everdeen could make him fight for what he wanted; fight for what he needed.

His fingers ache to brush the escaped hair that dangles in front of her beautiful face, but he smiles instead.

Her grimace, he thinks hours later, was the deal breaker.

(But deep down in his heart, he wonders how far Katniss would bring him. How far it would be from home with the cold rooms and the scraps of food, but the warmth of his family and their abundance of love.)

(How far away it would be from Prim.)

/

Pulling his scarf tighter around his neck, he believes he sees a flash of the sun. The clouds in the sky are so evident and large. He doesn't understand what the bright thing could be at all, until he hears his name being sung in the trees.

Primrose Everdeen has her bright blonde hair dangling beneath her as she hangs upside down from a branch. She looks so young, her cheeks bright pink and her lips twisted into a smile.

The thing is from upside down, it looks like a frown.

She throws her hands up when she sees him and swings down. He is staring at her the whole time, his head thinking a thousand and six things. Her shirt is too big for her – one of Katniss' he thinks. He wishes he didn't think about her – her brown hair and her grey eyes.

Prim stands below him – the opposite but the same. She smiles at him – all teeth.

He wants to kiss her so badly – this tiny girl with the tail that sticks out in the back of her shirt, this girl with the innocent eyes. She looks like glass, he thinks. She tucks her hair behind her ear and frowns, but it's so lovely and all that he's thinking that is from upside down it would look like a smile.

When he doesn't speak, she walks away, her fabric tail swishing back and forth.

"Wait," he calls out.

She turns back to him, her eyes wistful and sad. It takes him all his might, but he smiles at her. She comes back. But he knew she would.

Her eyes are warm and blue as the water, the opposite of Katniss, he thinks. Prim is water and Katniss is fire and he doesn't know why this is all getting complicated. His eyes are in hers, and maybe if he listened to his mother talking about his father, he would understand.

(I'm drowning, I'm drowning.)

"I'd best be going home," Prim says slowly.

Gale revives his thoughts, raises his lips mechanically,"Yeah, you should."

As she walks away, he calls out to her, "Meet me here tomorrow?"

Her eyes shine, and he knows it's a yes.

/

She's always wanted to go to a festival, she tells him on the third night. One of those ones that the Capitol throws – with all those beautiful, alien people that have smiles like diamonds and tears like glass.

He wants to give her anything she wants, and sometimes when he walks into the mines, whistling a pretty tune, the other men give him strange stares.

(Because isn't that girl he loves in the Games? Isn't she kissing the boy who's parents bake bread?)

Gale hasn't thought of Katniss the past three hours, and when he remembers her, he's more than slightly confused.

But he is still happy, as well.

/

Their families watch the Games together.

When Prim and Gale go outside and look at the stars instead, no one thinks twice about it. (The stars shine the same all over, Prim thinks. Katniss is seeing them too, those bright and beautiful stars.) Once or twice, Gale brings out the hidden bottle of liquor and he and Prim drink to the stars and to Katniss.

One night, their heads are fuzzy and their hands are looser and Gale's hand is on the top of her skinny thigh. She turns to him, her eyes a little bluer than usual. (Maybe it's the tears in her eyes, but he won't be able to remember in the morning.) She smiles, then; her teeth coated with a thin layer of alcohol and her tongue a strange tint instead of it's normal pink. He leans in real close, his fingers creeping lower down her thigh and his leg slowly hovering over her as he lies it down on the other side of her body.

"Tell me what you want, Primrose," he whispers, his palms facing down on either side of her head, her blonde hair tickling the tops of his hands.

She arches upwards, her tiny body rising and then falling. Her eyes are closed, and then she opens them suddenly – a flash of the sky, her eyes dreamy and her lips curled.

"Kiss me," she whispers.

Gale smiles, and kisses her pink lips.

Their tongues sweep each others; both stained with drink. Prim's tiny breasts let his body press harder down – the friction beautifully too much and too little and he forgets how old she is – who her sister is. He thinks she is beautiful and warm and different. He thinks he is in love with her, Primrose Everdeen with the blue eyes and the blonde hair.

He pulls away and says, "May the odds ever be in our favor."

And then, it comes crashing down when she frowns. Six years in the making. Gale, who had been so elated to be considered an adult, wishes only to be her age. To have this be his first kiss.

"Would you love me?" Prim whispers. Her voice is so soft, as if he could ignore the question.

He sighs, his fingers tracing the tiny buttons of her shirt and looks into her blue eyes, "I think I already do."

But she does not say anything back, and Gale is surprised that he may not know her as well as he thought he did.

/

They meet under the tree, his hair still wet from washing and her eyes still sticky from sleep.

Her eyes are glowing, the blue looking as if it was a constant wave; back and forth, it enchants him.

She smiles and it's so beautiful – more beautiful than the tiny primroses that are growing in the grass, and he breathes in sharply.

Words come out before he can stop it, "What would you want to do, if you could do anything in the world?"

She takes a moment to think, before saying, "I'd want to be a doctor. I'd want to live in a big glass house – one of those pretty ones in the Capitol."

He smiles faintly, "One day, Prim, I'll buy you a big glass house."

She smiles again, and his breath is taken away once more.

/

She pushes back his hair, tucks it behind his ear.

She looks older tonight. There's ash smudged on her eyelids, as if she wanted to appear darker. Less of her innocent self and more like Katniss, with her sharp edges and her gaunt features. But Gale likes the soft, tiny frame that Prim has. The way her baby blue eyes shine through; the way her ears stuck out of her wavy blonde hair.

It occurs to Gale at that moment that he has fallen out of love with Katniss, and in love with Prim.

Gale wipes the ash off of Prim's eyelids and kisses her softly.

He wants them to have all the time in the world.

/

When Katniss returns home, Gale falls for her once more. It is more forced, however. His flirtation seems mechanical and foreign.

Prim hides in her house for four days and then Gale stops trying.

/

He has a recurring dream.

The revolution is over and they're smiling over their wooden dinner table. There's so much food, and her eyes are the brightest blue they've ever been.

The glass walls are letting the sunset drown their house in color and Prim's face is lit up with so many shades of pink and yellow. The yellow hides in her hair and the pink hides in her lips, her cheeks.

"I love you," Prim says.

She smiles and then the dream softly fades into black before a new dream takes it's place.

/

Katniss is taken from him once more, and he breathes a sigh of relief when she storms away, taking all her fire and her heat with her. He worries too; about what adventures she'll get into and if she'll stay alive.

He just doesn't know if the worry if from _love_, or just his fierce love for her.

But he doesn't understand the question, so if you could just repeat it again.

/

He hasn't talked to Prim – hasn't gotten to see her beautiful eyes or her shy smile that brightens up his world –

And then the sky is falling down, and he's trying to save everyone. (He's always wanted to be one of the heroes in the stories, he told her that on a starry night when his lips were loosened with liquor.) He remembers her; her bright eyes and her tiny body that felt so right against his.

He runs to the Everdeen's home, tells them to grab necessary things. Prim cries when he says she should leave Buttercup, slams her fists against his chest and calls him a heartless bastard. He grabs the uneasy, lazy cat and grabs Prim's hand to lead her away. Ms. Everdeen runs with them and they run away from the bombs and the burning district they were all born in.

Prim turns her head, and pulls Gale's hand, and they watch to see the foundation of her house collapse in flames. Prim whispers under her breath, her tears flowing down her cheeks, but he cannot hear her words over the bombs. He squeezes her hand tighter. They run to catch up with the crowd.

/

She has a cut on her forehead, but she doesn't care. Her hands are repeatedly stroking Buttercup, going in the same exact line across the cat's back. Her mother is running around, helping the few people who got to evacuate.

Gale watches her from his chair, her hair puffy and her eyes red. He gets up swiftly and moves Buttercup away from Prim's hands and kisses her. Her back is pressed against the wall, their bodies seated on the bed. She starts to cry a hopeless song, but her fingers are grazing his face, the miniature cuts that litter his face.

"I love you," she whispers, her breath catching up with her.

He presses her body against the bed. He's not thinking about the years that should be between their bodies – repelling them away, this thoughts are of _her_ and how she smiles and how she's so perfectly perfect for him.

She pulls her shirt over her head, exposing her tiny breasts and her tears are now only sparse, sometimes dampening the covers underneath them.

He kisses them and six years does not seem to be too many as they make love on sterile sheets.

/

They don't spend much time with one another in District Thirteen. Katniss is back and Gale spends his time trying to hide what happened between Prim and himself. Sometimes they escape into each other, for the brief breaks they get away from their duties. They don't usually get to make love, and when they do, it's a swift tangle that is hard to plain with both Ms. Everdeen and Katniss around.

They speak about their hopes more than anything else. They make plans for after the war, Prim wants to get the proper education to be a doctor and Gale wants to help in the government somehow.

"We'll make it work," Gale whispers into her skin, "We'll find a way."

Prim smiles, "You know, I can't hide anything from you."

It takes him a moment to regain his breath and she laughs, her body shaking against his. Their vision is of a white ceiling and he wants to make everything right; stay with her forever.

"I love," he says, before the door starts to open and he hides underneath the bed, waiting for Ms. Everdeen to leave the room.

Prim leaves with her mother, and Gale tucks a note underneath her pillow.

_I love you._

/

He realizes during the air raid, that she went back for the cat.

He curses underneath his breath and runs to her room, his thoughts just thinking of her and her silly compassion and her water eyes and her ears and _her_.

He finds her throwing the room apart, Buttercup tucked under her arm.

She's crying, her eyes looking like an upset ocean. "I can't find the note, Gale! I can't find it..."

He grabs Buttercup from her hands and grabs her hand, thinking of something of a similar predicament that seemed like it was years ago. She's blinking fast, and he's thinking, if we die, at least we'll die together with this old cat.

Prim is sobbing, and he doesn't understand why she'd risk her life for his horribly written note.

"I love you too," Prim screams over the deafening noise of closing doors.

She squeezes his hand tight and he smiles, because he thinks that everything might be okay.

Buttercup moans so loudly that it echoes in the hallways, and Prim and Gale laugh as they run.

/

(When Gale whispered that he loved Katniss in the woods – something that would end up to be an idiotic move, he didn't see Katniss as much as he saw a young girl with blue eyes and blonde hair.)

(That scared him a bit.)

/

Both Prim and Gale do not want the other to go to the battle of the Capitol.

They both end up going, but Gale has the oddest feeling as he makes weapon plans. It's a very particular feeling, as if something will be taken from him.

He shrugs it off.

/

He kisses her before he runs to fight. It's a sad kiss, pathetically short, but he promises her that there will be more when he comes back a winner. She's crying and he wants to kiss her again, stay with her longer. He tells her that everything will be okay, that they will tell everyone about their relationship when the war is over, when everything is right again. They will live in a big glass house. He promises.

He runs out as she cries, because he has always wanted to be the hero. She knows this. She wants to be a hero too, and she thinks this is why they are so perfect.

/

It is a foolish idea to save the children, but she is just a child herself. She wants to save them, to be more than Katniss Everdeen's little sister. She wants to be enough for Gale, to be mature and wise.

It is her age, her lack of common sense, that causes her death. Silver parachutes fall from the sky. They make her blue eyes widen. (His favorite thing about her was her blue eyes.) And then before she thinks that this was his creation or that he wouldn't be able to kiss her again, she thought that he would never be able to give her a big glass house.

/

His fingers are bloody.

Her head is crushed under the rubble of the place they were going to live – her tiny body, that had pressed against his, was cut millions of times.

He does not wake up this time.


End file.
